Research predicts surge in 2018 mobile money transfers

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Nigel Frith
Nigel Frith
Former Global General Manager
Nigel was the Global General Manager at FXcompared. Nigel has a background in marketing for businesses and consumers as well working in a variety of online financial services roles. Read more
  • Huge boost for mobile money transfers market predicted
  • Facebook, WeChat and Google could lead the way

A new study has found that the number of people using mobile money transfer services will increase significantly this year, eventually reaching 2.5 billion global users by year's end. This is up from the estimated 1.7 billion mobile transfer users in 2016.

Social media platforms like WeChat and Facebook will drive the trend, according to researchers, as these apps continue to expand their offerings to include payment services.

Juniper Research, an industry-leading payments and fintech analysis firm who published the report, predicts the following global transaction values carried out via mobile in the coming year:

  • Domestic person-to-person: 65%
  • Cash-in: 13%
  • Cash-out: 11%
  • Bulk disbursement: 8%
  • Domestic mobile airtime top-up: 2%

Key rollouts from Apple, Facebook and Google are expected to bring some long-delayed and long-overdue growth to the social payments market.

Nitin Bhas, one of the study's authors, noted: “It was inevitable that players such as Apple would follow in the footsteps of WeChat Pay and AliPay, and offer a universal set of payment features integrating P2P, alongside existing contactless and ticketing functionalities."

Juniper predicts Apple will reach one billion annual transactions by 2020, despite the fact that experts predict a slow start for the tech giant. Strong competition from traditional banking networks already operating in Apple's target launch market will keep initial numbers low and will temper initial growth, according to researchers.

The number of users who rely on mobile services to make international money transfers should exceed one billion by 2020 as well, which will significantly impact financial inclusion for those without traditional bank accounts. Even now, funds transfer service operators are constantly looking for new ways to make both national and international transactions easier and more convenient for these users, encouraging growth across the industry.


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